ERA4HEALTH - InterHeart 2025 call

Research

What?

The ERA4Health partnership has launched the Joint Transnational Call on InterHeart: “Understanding the interactions between cardiovascular diseases and comorbidities and/or their therapeutic treatments” (InterHeart).

The aim of the call is to support research that:

• build our understanding of molecular and cellular mechanisms governing interactions between the cardiovascular system and the other organs/systems when at least one of the two presents a pathological state,
• build a comprehensive approach to understanding cardiovascular disease interactions, combining basic research, clinical translation, and digital innovation through international collaboration,
• enable transnational collaboration of multidisciplinary scientists from different countries to work together across borders, taking advantage of complementary expertise and leveraging diverse patient populations and sets of data.

The proposals should focus on expanding knowledge and understand:

• how CVD affect the performance of other organs/systems and/or their capacity to respond to treatments,
• how disorders other than CVD affect cardiovascular system performance including response to treatments,
• and/or how treatment for disorders other than CVD affect positively or negatively the performance of the cardiovascular system.

The proposals should include one of the following approaches:

• Mechanistic / experimental research,
• Identification and validation of biomarkers of organs/systems/disorders crosstalk mentioned above (including epigenetics biomarkers),
• Generation of digital models of disease(s) to study disease-disease or disease-drug.

Funding will come via FWO through the fundamental (FO) or Strategic Basic Research (SBO) channel. The type and scope of the proposed research project will determine the choice of funding channel for the research performed within Flanders (more fundamental in nature, or more aimed at economical/societal valorisation). Non-compliance with the specific requirements per funding channel might lead to non-eligibility.

The FWO is able to support 2 projects for a 36 months duration, with an available maximum applicable budget of 350.000 EUR (overhead included) per project/consortium.

Application?

Project proposals have to be submitted by European and international consortia through the submission platform, and respect the general and  ‘national/regional’ eligibility criteria, as taken up in the call text (from p. 25 onwards). 

It's a 2-step submission:
Deadline submission pre-proposal: 7 March 2025, 12:00

The FWO requires pre-registration on a national/regional level as well by filling in an application form on the FWO e-portal before the deadline for submission of the pre-proposals. When you're logged on to the e-portal, you can find it under "Researcher".
It is strongly recommended to contact the FWO administration about your pre-registration at the latest one week before submission in order to verify admissibility.

For the fundamental funding channel the respective regulation applies. For the SBO channel the SBO regulation has to be taken into account: these imply projects with a primarily economic and/or societal finality, of which ‘valorisation’ is a key - and mandatory - aspect.

Given the pre-proposal already has to be OK in terms of budget, OBI has an internal deadline to check your proposal.
Internal deadline: 28 February 2025

In case the consortium includes more than one partner requesting funding from FWO, a single online form should be submitted containing all relevant information from the different Flemish partners.

7 May 2025: communication of the results and invitation for full proposal
Deadline submission full proposal: 17 June 2025
Rebuttal stage: 22 August - 3 September 2025
End of October 2025: communication of the funding decisions
December 2025 – May 2026: expected start of the project (subject to national procedures)
  
  

More information?

You can find more information, like the call text, the submission platform and the proposal application form on the ERA4Health partnership website. 
Concerning the FWO regulations, you can consult the FWO website:
for the fundamental funding channel
for the SBO channel

The partnership ERA4health organised an online InterHeart info day on January 14th, 2025. You can find the recording of the webinar and the presentation on the ERA4Health partnership website.

Please contact research@uhasselt.be if you want to apply.
  

Deadline intern

28.02.2025, 07.03.2025

Contact Hasselt University?

E-mail sarah.szyr@uhasselt.be

Tel. +3211269052